Silver Linings Playbook Wins Toronto Film Festival Audience Award

In the 34 years that the Toronto International Film Festival has handed out an audience award, 10 of those winners have gone on to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars-- and 4 have won the top prize. Two of those big winners, The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire, have won in the last 5 years, which could mean that David O. Russell's The Silver Linings Playbook is now riding a trend to a very, very good spot come Oscar night.

Silver Linings, which was one of the few films nobody could shut up about in Toronto, was announced as the Peoples Choice Award winner last night at the close of the Toronto International Film Festival. The runner-up was the other movie nobody could shut up about, Ben Affleck's Argo, which is set for release in just a few weeks. Silver Linings was also one of the few prize winners with a release currently planned, but another that you can check out this year is Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths, which won the audience award in the legendary Midnight Madness section. For whatever reason, we received a statement from McDonagh about winning the award; here it is below:

"We were so thrilled to be a part of the Toronto Film Festival, to take part in the crazy fun of a Midnight Madness screening, and now so honored to be given the People's Choice Award. On behalf of the cast I'd like to thank everyone who voted, and everyone involved in the festival, from the programmers to the volunteers. It felt like most democratic film festival I've ever been to, and we had such a blast being there."

One more notable prize winner was the documentary Afterlife, which won the People's Choice Award in the doc section. It chronicles the struggles of Jared Leto and his band 30 Seconds to Mars as they deal with the modern realities of the music industry, and while yeah, you can say that a documentary featuring Jordan Catalano of My So-Called Life is a shoo-in, it sounds like pretty pressing subject matter all the same.

For a rundown of what Sean and I saw at TIFF and loved, you can read our festival wrap-up report here. And many thanks to The Film Experience for that stat about audience award winners.